Item 2A: Approval of Council Minutes

Home Browse Search

Arlean Moses , 2150 Lakeview Drive, observed that none of the people speaking in support of the proposal lived in the affected neighborhood. She said the issue was not about the development’s compliance with the code but rather than about neighbors’ desires to be included in the decision that they were going to have to live with. She said that one of the HPB members had been offended by neighbors’ passion about the issue and did not appreciate their questions. Ms. Moses reported she had asked the HPB about the impact of the development on property values. Did property values go down or did they go up? She wanted true information about the impact of the development on the schools. Ms. Moses asked why residents could not get an answer to the question of whether Sheldon High School was full and questioned who from the district was providing the information. She asked if area principals had been consulted. She said residents had children in those schools, and their experience was very different than the reports the council received. She asked which was true, neighbors’ experience or those reports. Ms. Moses invited the council at visit her home and sit in her yard at 5 p.m. to view the congestion and activity on the street. They would understand why the neighbors were asking that the process be slowed. She was not against affordable housing. She understood the need for and the value of such housing but believed that Bascom Village was the wrong project at the wrong time in the wrong place. Carl Swan , 2225 Devon Avenue, concurred with the remarks of Mr. Papé. He likened the HPB hearing to the Twilight Zone, with the same response consistently offered to all neighbors’ questions. He asked the council not to approve the project as presented. He said something was wrong with the process. Someone did not do their job. He asked the council to “push the pause button.” Greg Woods , 2364 Parkview Drive, said he had attended meetings of the HPB and had been struck by an article by David Brooks who wrote about “motivated blindness,” which the condition of not seeing what was not in your best interest to see. People suppressed the facts they did not like, they tended to inflate their own virtues, and believed they acted more nobly that they did. He witnessed such behavior at the HPB when a board member had attacked a member of the public at the end of a meeting. Mr. Woods asked the council to separate the “vital lies” from the truth. He suggested examples of such vital lies were arguments that the neighbors were rich people who opposed the poor, their concerns revolved around reduced property values, the current infrastructure was adequate, and that St. Vincent de Paul was a nonprofit agency so everything it did must be good. John Jaworski , 2985 Lord Byron, Chair of the Northeast Neighbors, called for a focus on concrete steps that could be taken to minimize the project’s impact on the neighborhood. He said his organization’s concerns were not about affordable housing, which it supported, or the dispersal policy, which it supported, or about Bascom Village itself. The organization was worried about the size of Bascom Village and the cumulative impact of Drakes Crossing on neighborhood livability, character, and safety. The two projects were inside a two-block area and would bring an additional 800 to 1,000 residents, including 200 or more school children, and add 1,800 to 2,000 trips per day to local streets. He identified transportation/traffic, residents’ mobility, access to services, and education as key issues. He asked that local streets impacted by the proposed developments be upgraded as soon as possible and advocated for traffic calming measures to reduce speeding. He asked the City to persuade LTD to serve the area with bus service and bus shelters. He recommended that the school district develop a contingency plan to addressed school crowding. Michael Reeder , 800 Willamette Street, Suite 800, Arnold Gallagher Parcells Robert, asked the council to reject the Request for Proposals for Bascom Village and return the property in question to its original low-density residential designation in the Eugene-Springfield Metropolitan General Area Plan. He believed the property’s medium-density residential designation was in error and should not have occurred without some provision for buffering. He did not think the site was appropriate under the City’s Housing MINUTES—Eugene City Council November 21, 2011 Page 11 Public Hearing